BeautifullyOrganized

Today I get the pleasure of introducing you to a very special person. It’s my mother, Nancy Nemitz. She is a professional organizer and has agreed to share a few tips to organizing craft areas with us. In the comments, I’d love to hear what other areas you need help organizing!

In my experience as a professional organizer, helping clients create the space for their craft projects is one of the most challenging. Crafters have a very hard time limiting the scope of their crafts and the volume of materials. Their mindset is usually, “You never know when you might need one of these.” Disorganization and the over abundance of materials leads to overwhelm.

Fewer projects get completed when there are too many choices. It’s very common for clients to tell me how much they love to work on crafts, but nothing gets finished because it’s frustrating to work in a disorganized space. The solution is to be realistic about what you are able to work on considering your space, work, family obligations, and other time commitments. The most beautiful craft rooms are those that are the result of keeping only the best supplies and materials; thinking about what space you will devote to your craft, and then organizing your supplies and space so it helps you work on your projects, not hinder your work.

Craft Room: Ideas and Inspiration
1. Hang pegboards to organize tools and small items. They come in beautiful colors and materials. There are lots of bins, hooks, and shelving you can use with your pegboard to maximize your space. It would be fun to create just the right pegboard for your needs.

Courtesy of Craftster

2. Usually, people put their table and shelving up against the walls and the middle of the room is empty. Putting the work table in the middle of the room allows you to pick out the supplies you need from around the room and assemble them on your work table. You can work all the way around the table. Put roll out cards underneath to maximize space. The Elfa system from The Container Store allows you to build a work table with pull out drawers on either side. I get more done standing up so I like the tables high so I can stand to work or use a high stool if I want to sit down.
3. One of my favorite products is the Expedit from IKEA. The modular unit comes in various sizes and can be fitted with drawers and doors. I’ve used these in bedrooms, offices, craft rooms, living rooms and even used them as a room dividers. The cubes make categorizing easy. (*SarahBee Note: I use one of these, myself!)

Expedit from IKEA

4. I have a very good friend who uses the tilt bins from Lowes to store all her small scrapbooking items. She mounted them to the wall and labeled each bin. These are the bins that are usually used in a garage to store nuts and bolts. I find a lot of great organizing supplies in hardware stores. I’ve even used the Sears tool chests for a client who created miniature dollhouses.

Top Chest Storage from Sears

5. Organize craft magazines using literature holders. If you are inspired by a picture in a magazine, have a craft binder with page protectors set up for storing inspiration. If you won’t go through the trouble of cutting out and putting it in the binder, the idea isn’t worth saving.
6. Another favorite product is the chrome shelving from Costco. It’s flexible, inexpensive, and sturdy.

Chrome Shelving from Costco

7. The Container Store’s 80 pocket canvas hanging jewelry organizer takes up little space and holds a lot of little things. The clear pockets allow you to see what’s inside very quickly. They have a necklace and bracelet canvas organizer as well. Use this to hang anything.
8. Over the door shoe organizers. I use these for fabric, tissue, ribbon; again, anything that needs to be separated and categorized.
9. Behind the door racks: Utilize your door space. I’ve used these with the narrow baskets for sewing notions.

Elfa from The Container Store

10. You can’t possibly have enough clear shoe boxes from The Container Store.
Send pictures of your newly organized craft spaces to nancy@createthespace.com. I would love to see how you implemented these ideas or were inspired to create something different.

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Nancy is also the professional organizer on an episode of Hoarding: Buried Alive scheduled to air April 20th, 2011.

The best place to start is the area that is causing the greatest frustration. The important thing is to carve out enough time to see results, usually 3 hours or more. If you shuffle or only work on something for half an hour here and there, you’ll get frustrated because you won’t see real progress.

First of all, Nancy, THANK YOU for these ideas! I’m not a big crafter, but a lot of my office work comes home with me to my home office and I can see some of these ideas REALLY helping! Also, because Sarah Bee has linked me to some of your ideas in the past, I’ve already started implementing some of your other ideas in other areas in my house. (Like the snack basket in my pantry! Which is a HUGE help!) Thank you so much! I hope you’ll do another installment soon!

Thank you for the feedback. I’m going to be recording new teleclasses on office organizing, craft rooms, kitchens, and time management very soon. If you’d like to be notified when they are available, please send an email to nancy@createthespace.com.

Whoops! I posted a comment but don’t see it. I just wanted to say THANK YOU for this article. I am in the process ( a looonnnggg one!) of turning a spare room into a craft room. I have utilitzed some of these ideas already but also got some great new ones from your post.

I see you are going to have some teleclasses. I look forward to those as well!